The Twentieth Century Way
Actors, it seems, will do anything for money, or so the new and interesting new play by Tom Jacobson called The Twentieth Century Way that recently opened at the Boston Court. This is a play about many things, acting, ethics, philosophical questions about an artist’s responsibility to his art and to truth, yellow journalism, gay bashing, and maybe even about the two actors Robert Mammana and Will Bradley.
The premise is based on a true story. In 1914 two out of work actors were hired by the Long Beach Police Department to entrap homosexuals. This is the first time that entrapment was used, and fairly successfully, in California. Of course, there were no niceties of the law that defined what was entrapment and what was just arresting someone for soliciting sex in public. The two actors arrive at a theatre to audition for the roles of enticer. There is Warren, an aggressive type, and the “handsome one”, who was a believer in grand theatrical gestures as was the style in the early part of the 20th century. . The other actor, the “pretty” Brown, believed in Stanislavski and the more natural style of acting. This immediately starts to confuse the time periods as the actors begin to compete for the job and jump around from the present. 20010, to 1914, t0 the 1920s or is it the thirties. This devise keeps the audience on their collective toes and we become “entrapped” by the theatricality and trickery of the conceit. The play is part Sleuth, part expose, part Accomplice, and part pure theatrical gymnastics. The actors act out several characters between them. Mammana plays himself, Warren the actor from 1914, a newspaper editor from Sacramento, a Minnesota florist and the competing actor who believes in the dramatic gesture. Bradley, who I found riveting, plays himself, a reporter, a gay Scottish druggist, and an attorney. Between the two actors they play over a dozen characters. What I found remarkable about Bradley’s work is that he stayed real despite the theatricality of it all. Mammana had a tendency, as did his character, to overreach.
The talented director Michael Michetti provides precise direction and clear transformations for all this. The acting was very good but I do find some fault with the playwriting. especially at the end when the actors disrobe as themselves to test whether or not the other might be a secretly closeted actor and to test to see how far an actor would go to get a job. This multilayered text gets a bit muddled along the way especially when the actors addressed each other using real names. This provocative show will go to New York for the New York Fringe Festival. Meanwhile you can catch the Twentieth Century Way at the Boston Court until June 6th.